Starting in the
late 1970’s America
saw the emergence of a new form of music called hip hop. Few people believed it
would last.They saw it as a passing
fad.Much can be written about the origins of hip
hop, its influences reach as far back as the 1930’s, but this is not what this
paper is about.Instead, it
focuses on the emergence of hip hop culture as an industry, more specifically,
the hip hop industry (in art, music and movies) during the mid to late 1980’s
and the people and companies that transformed hip hop culture into an industry,
but this cannot be achieved without some mention of its origin.

Hip
hop culture is a child of New York.Its streets,
ghettos, parks, and clubs gave hip hop its start. Not just the music, but also break dancing and
graffiti art.The break dancing was
never thought of as real dancing, and the break dancers, or b-boys as they were
called, were frowned on in the streets where they performed their art.Graffiti was definitely not considered art by
the art world.It was a nuisance, a form
of destruction of property.Once the hip
hop culture was embraced by the mainstream, graffiti, and the people who
created the art, taggers, were embraced, but that wasn’t until the music made
graffiti and break dancing a focus of the mainstream.

Graffiti
is not a product of hip hop.Hip hop adopted
the art because they both represented the same feelings of the artists that
created it, the outcasts and people who were not given voices.Graffiti’s history can date back to World War
II.[1]The artists who sprayed graffiti around the
cities, especially in New York,
were called taggers, because they never signed their work with their real
names.Doing so could result in
destruction of property charges.Much of
the art was focused on subway cars, tunnels, and buses.As Nelson George observes in Hip Hop America, “to those young or
observant enough to see beyond the nuisance caused to travelers, graffiti was
the voice of kids using spray paint and Magic Markers to scream for attention
and make art.”[2]In the early 1980’s, the art world, always
looking for the next big thing, finally decided that graffiti was an art
form.Several artists of the day were
commissioned to create murals for wealthy patrons.

Several galleries
were opened by “Fab 5” Freddy Braithwaite, the “Fab 5” being his graffiti group’s
moniker, with the help of some friends in the art world.[3]Some
of these taggers were able to sell twelve foot canvases of their work for
upwards of ten to twelve thousand dollars.[4]Some of the graffiti could be found in Subway Art, a glossy publication which
shows the fascinating pop culture that grew up around community art graffitists
in New York.“In 100 pages of photographs and interviews,
innovatively captured on film and gleaned over several years, a dynamic world
is revealed of underground artists who go to elaborate lengths to make their
marks in an otherwise bleak world.”[5]Tony Shafrazi, a gallery owner in Soho stated that “it is time to wake up to the fact that
we are in a new era.The new artists are
the heirs to the continuing tradition of rebellion, play and adventure which is
art.”[6]Graffiti still wasn’t about the money though,
and would never be more about the money than the art.

Lee Quinones, a tagger
in New York,
transformed his grimy, run-down neighborhood into a graffiti wonderland.“He changed the grimy place near BrooklynBridge into spectacular and incredible
famous gallery of graffiti. He painted almost every night the walls next to a
baseball fields, some people thought that it was an immense and very essential
split in graffiti. The writers started to paint the walls not a subway.”[7]Fab 5 Freddy was one of the people who became
interested in this occurrence and wrote an article to Village Voice about the innovative transformation in
graffiti art.

Insiders affiliated
with major labels never thought hip hop would make it onto radio.It was something that only the cool people
listened to; something you had to seek out and find in order to hear.It started out as two turntables mixing
records together with a Master of Ceremonies introducing each track.It evolved into a DJ show with disc jockeys
scratching and mixing the records while the MC (now Mic Controller instead of
Master of Ceremonies) spoke words over the instrumentals.Then, you finally had “rap,” where artists
would speak in rhythm over the music.These
DJs and MCs would play on the streets and parks of their neighborhoods, such as
the Bronx, Queensbridge, and other New
York boroughs.They would eventually make it into local clubs, but many of the larger venues
were hesitant to book hip hop acts because of the potential loss of revenue and
because the rebellious nature of the music.Hip hop music was still not a genre that would be considered as a genre
by major record labels and music critics.They thought it was “too edgy and nothing more than a fad.”[8]The main reason was because hip hop lacked a
song that could propel it to the mainstream.

Until 1979 the sole documentation of Bronx
hip hop was cassette tapes either clandestine tapes made by would-be
bootleggers at parties and clubs, or tapes made by groups themselves and given
out to friends, to cab drivers or to kids with giant tapes boxes…[9]

The
DJ was one of the most important characters in the hip hop arena in the
1980’s.Innovators such as Afrika
Bambaataa, Kool Herc, and Grandmaster Flash turned the “wheels of steel” into a
bona fide instrument.Grandmaster Flash
popularized the scratching that Grand Wizard Theodore invented.[10]Flash was a showman who not only mixed the
records, but enjoyed putting on a show for the audience.He could spin with his back to the
turntables, as well as using his feet to mix the records.He also is credited for some major
innovations with the turntable.“Punch
phrasing,” playing a quick burst from a record on one turntable while it
continues on the other, and “break spinning,” alternately spinning both records
backward to repeat the same phrase over and over, are credited to Flash.[11]Because of his showmanship, Flash played to sold
out shows, at places like 116th
Street’s Harlem World Disco, as his legend grew
and people from all over came to see him.Nelson George, writer of Hip Hop
America, reminisces about one of the first times he was introduced to hip
hop.He remembers hearing a song on a
passerby’s boombox.“Yo, yo!” He asked,
“Who’s that?”“Hollywood” he said over
his shoulder.George started doing a
little investigation after that and found that “homemade tapes like his were
floating around the five boroughs, forming an underground musical economy way before
the music found its way onto vinyl.[12]

This all changed
in 1979 when an unknown hip hop group called The Sugarhill Gang recorded
“Rapper’s Delight” that was released on Sugar Hill Records, an independent,
black-owned, label that was one of the first companies to make hip hop a product
to buy.The song became a
huge success as a single and eventually sold over two millions copies, peaking
at number four on the Billboard
R&B charts and number thirty-six on the pop charts.[13]This was really the first time hip hop left
the New York
area and hit the entire world.None of
the artists and DJ’s that were making the music ever thought about making a
living because of it.They did it
because it was fun, they did it out of boredom, and they did it out as a form
of expression. At the same time that “Rapper’s Delight” was blowing up the
charts worldwide, someone who could become the most influential person
in hip hop music was getting started.

Russell Simmons
was brought up in Hollis, Queens. His father,
Daniel, was supervisor of attendance in QueensSchool District
29. Russell Simmons studied sociology at the Harlem branch of CityCollege.
It was there that he teamed up with fellow student Curtis Walker to throw
parties in Harlem and Queens at which the
first generation of rappers competed. He went on to manage Walker, who as
Kurtis Blow became the first big solo rap star in 1979.Simmons worked with Blow in the completion of
“Christmas Rappin.’”He also managed
other successful acts such as Run-D.M.C., Will Smith, as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the
Fresh Prince, as well as legendaries DJ Hollywood and DJ Kool Herc.

“Christmas
Rappin’” was Simmons’ first time of his illustrious career, that he entered the
studio.When the song was completed,
Simmons began shopping it around to various labels for release.As Simmons said in Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money + God, “There was interest, but no
one was biting.The industry’s attitude
was that “Rapper’s Delight,” despite its US sales and international appeal,
was an unrepeatable fluke.”[14]While it was a fluke for the artists that
recorded the song, the genre was by no means a fluke.“Christmas Rappin’” gained moderate success
on radio.In places around the South,
the single was still being played in late July.Simmons, who needed distribution for the record, approached PolyGram to
distribute it.PolyGram wasn’t
interested in investing in a hip hop record, but Simmons decided to show them
the power of hip hop.He decided to go
around to the various stores that expressed interest in the record and told
them to order the record from PolyGram.When PolyGram started receiving orders from stores, they saw this as an
immediate opportunity to cash in on hip hop.Kurtis Blow signed a record deal with Mercury Records, a label under the
PolyGram umbrella.This marked the first
time a hip hop act was signed to a major label.[15]

Sugar Hill Records
did find some more success on their roster.The legendary Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five signed to Sugar
Hill Records and made its mark in hip hop in 1980.The group released the record “Freedom” which
hit the top 20 on the R&B charts.1981’s “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” was
the first record to feature complex cuts and scratches, and introduced the name
Grandmaster Flash as their originator. But it was 1982’s “The Message” which
became the first hip-hop social commentary on ghetto life, and which became a
critical crossover hit for Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.[16]Meanwhile, Simmons was out on tour with Blow
promoting the “Christmas Rappin’” single.Though Blow had two Gold singles (sales of five-hundred thousand each),
hip hop was still far from the minds of the major labels in the industry.They still didn’t see it as a marketable form
of music.While there were many very
successful independent hip hop labels that started in the mid-eighties, Russell
Simmons and Def Jam turned the underground hip hop movement into an industry,
and made hip hop music and culture a marketable, successful product.

In 1984 two very
different people with very different backgrounds met and would come to create
one of the most successful musical ventures in the industry’s history.Not only was it that successful, but it was
successful with a music the major labels didn’t see as becoming
successful.The first guy was Rick
Rubin, a former punk musician who loved the rebelliousness of this new form of
music.The other was Russell Simmons, the
concert promoter in New York
who was booking the hottest MCs and DJs of the time at small venues, parties,
and other small gatherings.These two
met when Simmons saw a little logo on an album by T. La Rock & Jazzy
J.This logo read “Def Jam.”The record was nothing like Simmons had ever
heard.He immediately began searching
for the producer of this record.He
tracked Rubin down and found out he attended New YorkUniversity.It was in a NYU dorm room that he met Rick
Rubin and formed a partnership that would change music history.

In
1984, Simmons candidly told Gary Harris, a former Def Jam executive, “I’m sick
of making people rich.I want to own my
own shit, my own record label, my own movie company.”[17]It was this mentality that drove Simmons to
find Rubin.When Simmons found Rubin,
he was surprised to find a white kid, but then “realized that Rick Rubin and I
had a lot in common.”[18]Simmons decided to ask Rubin to co-produce an
album by RUN-D.M.C., a group that Simmons was working with that also included
his brother, Joseph Simmons.RUN-D.M.C.
were probably the most popular and successful hip hop act of the time, but that
did not mean they garnered much chart success.It wasn’t until Rick Rubin convinced the boys of RUN-D.M.C. to
collaborate on a song with Aerosmith.The result was “Walk this Way,” which became the first rap record to
appear in heavy rotation on MTV.By this time, Simmons knew he did the right thing in pairing up with
Rubin, even though Simmons had been working with the group prior to meeting
Rubin, and the group was never signed to Def Jam.His mind was made up, and with visions of
success in his eyes, he went to create Def Jam Records with Rubin, using the
signature name and logo that Rubin had come up with for the T. La Rock &
Jazzy J record.

Simmons
and Rubin each put up four-thousand dollars for the formation of Def Jam
Records.Simmons immediately started
using his contacts from his promotion and management business, Rush Management,
to gain the attention of Billboard magazine.Def Jam was officially founded in the summer
of 1984.Simmons stated that, “The
purpose of this company is to educate people as to the value of real street
music by putting out records that nobody in the business world would distribute
but us.”[19]Surprisingly, it was their work with people
not on the label that gave them their initial notoriety.It was working on the album King of Rock by Run-D.M.C. that gained
Rubin and Simmons recognition from major labels interested in what Rubin and
Simmons were doing with the new phenomenon called hip hop.Not only was Simmons having huge success as a
concert promoter, manager of such acts as Kurtis Blow and Run-D.M.C., but he
also orchestrated one of the first hip hop clothing partnerships.

Simmons
and Lyer Cohan, who worked for Simmons’ Rush Management and would become head
of Def Jam Records, set up a deal with German shoe manufacturer, Adidas.While playing at New
York’s MadisonSquareGarden,
Run-D.M.C. played thousands of fans, and the two Adidas representatives, the
group played their song “My Adidas,” a song about the preferred shoes of the
group.When the song came on, the
thousands of fans in the Garden took off their Adidas and held them in the
air.This was quite impressive to
Adidas, impressive enough to offer a deal to the group.The Run-D.M.C. Adidas were shipped in a black
box with no laces, the style that was set by the group.If not for Simmons, hip hop’s first
sponsorship deal might not have been made.

About
the same time that Rubin and Simmons started meeting with major labels for
distribution, a young MC from New
York came to the attention of the pair.He was LL Cool J, real name, James Todd.Rubin started working with the sixteen year
old when Todd refused to quit calling Rubin to see if he had listened to his
demo, a demo that had been sitting un-opened in a pile in his NYU dorm
room.Rubin finally gave it a chance and
saw Todd becoming the next big thing.After recording some tracks, Rubin and Simmons saw Todd as the future
and decided to take the song “I Need a Beat” to Los Angeles for a meeting with associates
from Warner Brothers Records.According
to Simmons, when they put on LL Cool J’s “I Need a Beat,” “the whole room just
sat there- some of them stared at the speakers, some of them just sat looking
at their hands.It was like they were
hearing music from another planet.”They
left the building that day without a distribution deal with Warner
Brothers.But before they left LA, they
were playing “I Need a Beat” twelve times a day on KDAY, which had recently
become an all-rap format station.[20]This success with an un-established artist
later helped pave the way for negotiations with CBS Records.“I Need a Beat” was just the first of seven
singles released that first year by Def Jam.After meeting with CBS, they settled at a six
hundred thousand dollar promotion and distribution deal.[21]Todd’s next single, “Rock the Bells” went on
to sell over nine hundred thousand copies, his biggest single to date.[22]

With
the new distribution deal, Def Jam could finally afford to move out of the
dorms and into real offices.They moved
into a three-storey building in Greenwich Village.Simmons’ Rush Management took up the first
floor, Def Jam the second, and Rubin lived on the third.[23]Def Jam also was making enough money to hire
a staff, many of whom would go on to be presidents of other labels, or even
founders of their own.The reason why
Def Jam was becoming more and more successful is that they stayed true to what
Simmons and Rubin considered the real hip hop culture.They weren’t selling out to a white
mainstream audience.After the contract
was up with CBS records, Simmons went back to the negotiation table.Simmons used the success of the past year to
negotiate a deal with Columbia Records.Columbia, at the time, was
the biggest recording label.Though the
amount for the deal was never disclosed, it is believed to have been around one
million dollars.[24]If it was LL Cool J and Run-D.M.C. that gave
Def Jam its street credibility and its rise to the public eye, it was three
white boys from New York
that took them to the next level.

The
Beastie Boys only released one album on Def Jam Records before leaving because
of royalty issues.But it was this one
album, Licensed to Ill, which can be considered the most important album
in Def Jam’s and even hip hop’s history.Licensed to Ill was the product of the rebel punk attitude that
ran rampant in the 1980’s.In fact,
before converting to the rap style in which they became famous, the Beastie
Boys were members of various punk bands.It was this attitude that got them recognition from millions of
teens.It was their rebellious behavior
on tours with Run-D.M.C. and even Madonna, which won them fame in the
media.With major exposure like this, it
was no surprise to Simmons or Rubin that they would have a hit on their
hands.

The album’s first
single was “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party).”Columbia
heard the single and “flipped.”[25]Columbia
shipped only one hundred thousand copes of Licensed near the end of 1986.They quickly saw that demand was greater than
the supply.On November 29th,
1986, Licensed to Ill debuted on the Billboard charts at number
forty-nine.In the same issue of the
magazine, Def Jam ran an advertisement stating that “in the past four weeks
500,000 copies sold.[26]By the next week, the December 6th
issue, Licensed jumped to number
eight.[27]Licensed to Ill became the best
selling debut LP in Columbia’s
history and the first Billboardnumber one rap album.[28]The Beastie Boys only recorded one album for
Def Jam.They left after disagreements with
Rubin, in the direction their music was going, and Simmons, over money
issues.Licensed remains the Beastie Boys’ highest selling album.Even after Def Jam’s most commercially
successful group left the label, Def Jam was far from failure, capitalizing
on the current trends in society and hip hop culture.Def Jam continued its success throughout the
rest of the 1980’s, releasing albums from LL Cool J, Slick Rick, and Public Enemy, among others.It continues to be a major force in the
industry, even today, and is more than a label.For many, Def Jam is the brand of hip hop with everything it does, be it
video games, records and clothes.Simmons sold his share of the company in 1999 for one hundred million
dollars.He continued to remain part of
the company as a member of the board of directors, but sold his shares to
develop his other ventures, such as Phat Farm, his four-hundred million dollar
clothing line, the DefCon3energy drink,
and his own Visa card.[29]

Def Jam wasn’t the
only label that helped hip hop become what it is today.The reason it receives so much attention in
this paper, is because it is the
company that demonstrates it the best out of all the others, and also because
Simmons’ willingness to take chances in other industries, like movies, which
will be addressed later.Now, it is
appropriate to discuss briefly some of the other labels that helped propel hip
hop forward.

Tommy Boy Records,
started in 1981, and released the definitive hip-hop 12” single, “Planet Rock”
by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force. This was the record every DJ
coveted and had in their crates, this was the record that inspired countless
MC’s to pick up the mic, this was the record everyone rhymed over, in the parks
and in the clubs. Planet Rock exposed millions to the exciting New World of an urban Bronx street culture.The single would go on to sell over six
hundred thousand copies.[30]Tommy Boy would continue its success with
albums from De La Soul, Naughty By Nature, Digital Underground and Coolio.While Def Jam is still going strong, Warner
Music Group, Tommy Boy's longtime partner, acquired the 21-year-old label's
recorded music and music publishing catalogs for a little over ten million dollars,
along with the majority of its hip-hop roster: De La Soul and Prince Paul went
to Elektra, while Tony Touch, Coo Coo Cal and Everlast headed to Warner Bros.[31]

Sugar Hill
Records, the company that introduced the world to hip hop in a big way, never
experienced major success after their first record.As Russell Simmons said in Life
and Def, “Sugar Hill should have been as successful and enduring a label as
Def Jam, but they weren’t able to build on that early monopoly position.As more labels moved into the rap game, Sugar
Hill’s deals looked less attractive, and the newer talent signed elsewhere.”[32]In 1986, Sugarhill Records declared
bankruptcy.

Ruthless Records
was one of the first independent labels to hit it big on the West Coast.Founded by Eazy E, born Eric Wright, Ruthless
was surrounded by controversy from its inception.Shortly after its formation, the Federal
Government started investigating the label, claiming it was financed with drug
money.The controversy became even
bigger when Eazy E and friends Dr. Dre, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and Ice Cube formed
NWA.Their records sold millions and
created controversy with the single “Fuck the Police,” an indictment on corrupt
police officers in Compton,
California.Eazy E died in 1995 of complications with
AIDS.The label continued on and
released albums by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, who have sold more than fifteen
million records world wide.[33]The label still exists under the Atlantic
Records umbrella.

With all the success that these record labels
had, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood
would come knocking on hip hop’s door.Hip
hop movies grew out of “Blaxploaitation”
films of the 1960’s and 1970’s, such as Shaft,
Superfly and The Mack.It was these films that paved the way for the
movies targeted at the black audience in the 1980’s, but instead of using soul
and funk in the soundtrack and score to the movies, hip hop was used.

One of the first
movies to incorporate the hip hop culture was Breakin’, a story of a jazz dancer that meets up with two break
dancers.To date, this movie has grossed
upwards of thirty-six million dollars.[34]Because this was a low budget movie that
grossed so much, the producers thought it necessary to create a sequel, entitled
Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.In the sequel, break dancers prevent their
local recreation center from being bulldozed.This movie was not as near successful, grossing only six million
dollars.[35]What Breakin’
tried to do was copy from the successful movie Wild Style but wound up exploiting it.Wild
Style, a film starring a variety of rappers, is considered one of the best
hip hop movies.Not only did this 1982
movie expose more of the world to hip hop, but its soundtrack spread the music
to areas where the film had not been shown. “The people in the film are the
ones who helped create the original rap scene.”[36]

The next major
movie to be made by Hollywood
was a movie starring Mario Van Peebles called Rappin’.The story revolves
around Peebles’ character coming home from a stint in prison to see his little
brother rapped up in a life of crime.Throughout the movie he tries to convince his younger brother that a
life of crime is not worth it.In a
review from a 1985 New York Times,
the movie was deemed “likable enough” with a good-natured mood.[37]

One of the biggest
hip hop movies of the 1980’s was, not surprisingly, based on Russell Simmons’
life.Krush Groove was loosely based on Def Jam Records’ formation, and
included LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., the Beastie Boys, Kurtis Blow, and Rick
Rubin.The film had a three million
dollar budget, and went on to gross fifteen million in theatres.The movie had a fun, light-hearted approach
to the hip hop scene, focusing on the formation of the label and the ultimate
prize for all the rappers in the movie, a contest in which the winner would get
a recording contract with a major label.Of course, it was filmed as more of a hip hop musical, with the acts
breaking out into songs throughout the movie.Even though this was produced with Rubin and Simmons, creative control
went to the director.According to
Simmons, “There were a lot of scenes that embarrassed us.They were too bubble-gum.”[38]This lead Simmons to create an edgier film,
whose story was similar to the one in Krush
Groove.

The resulting
“edgier” movie was Tougher than Leather.The story was about Run-D.M.C. getting
harassed by a group of gangsters.This
film also featured Def Jam acts, including the Beastie Boys, Slick Rick, and
Rick Rubin, as well as Simmons himself.The
movie cost only seven-hundred thousand to make, but that was almost lost when
Simmons couldn’t find anyone to distribute it.Finally, he sold the rights to New Line Cinema and made the cost of the
movie back.The movie was criticized
deeply.One New York Times reporter claiming it was “vile, vicious, despicable,
stupid, sexist, racist and horrendously made.”[39]It did gross over three-million dollars in
the US,
but according to Simmons, he never saw a dime in royalties.[40]This stumble into the movie business kept
Simmons away from the movies for a while, but in the 1990s he would once again
find success on television with Def
Comedy Jam and in movies with The
Nutty Professor and its sequel, as well as Gridlock’d, the final film made by Tupac Shakur which won an award
for best picture at the esteemed Sundance Film Festival.Hip hop became the common theme in all movies
targeted at the urban youth, and is still the theme featured to this day.

In the 1980s you
saw hip hop music and culture become a major industry.Graffiti galleries were highly successful in New York, even though it
was for a short time.Break dancing,
accompanied by hip hop music was a phenomenon that spread across the nation and
touched urban youth all across America,
and later won over the hearts of its main consumer, suburban youths.After this, it is obvious to predict where
else hip hop would show up, in Hollywood.Hip hop based movies, usually cheaply made,
grossed more than what many people thought and transferred the culture even
further.This was just the
beginning.Hip hop would become the
dominant force in music for a time in the 1990s, and more hip hop movies, like Boyz in the Hood, would be made.It was because of Russell Simmons, that the
culture grew as much as it did in the 1980s to propel it to what it would
become in the next two decades.